Comin’ atcha from the Westside ... Medical Center in the very-creepily-named Plantation, Florida:
Department of Denominators: Really, the graph needs one, like, say, real tax revenue. I expect better.
Department of Thanks: “I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful discussion of the issues,” wrote Colonel Qaddafi in a letter to Congress. “We are confident that history will see the wisdom of your country in debating these issues. We are counting on the United States Congress to its continued investigation of military activities of NATO and its allies to confirm what we believe is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.”
Department of Trouble: Doug Muir made the good point that there must be reasons for the Anglo-French defense posture, since both countries spend significant amounts on their militaries. I would like to see this discussed seriously, for the simple reason that I do not discount the possibility that there is no plan, and NATO defense budgets are set simply out of a combination of momentum and interest group politics. Moreover, what’s the counterfactual? What would an alternate European defense posture look like?
Department of Panaceas: We’ll see if ending gerrymandering has an effect on California’s political woes. I doubt that it will, but I would also like to be wrong.
Department of Crime: There is less of it, and nobody really knows why.
Department of Bahrain: Things are very bad.
British defence procurement is a corrupt mess that makes the American procurement look sensible, clean, honest and efficient.
One journalist reporting on the mess that is UK procurement is Lewis Page (of the Register).
It's not generally a well-reported subject, but you could do worse than start with Lewis.
Posted by: Richard Gadsden | June 12, 2011 at 07:34 AM
Plantation FL? I live near White Settlement, TX. Granted there's a historical reason for it, but my wife and I kept doing a double-take every time we drove by.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero | June 13, 2011 at 01:11 PM
Sweet Mary, man. That is s creepier town name than Plantation.
Posted by: Noel Maurer | June 13, 2011 at 01:50 PM
http://www.warisboring.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/14economist-bartlett-blog480.jpg
WiB isnt that great a blog, in fact, I mostly use it for a feed to other links I'd not normally be aware of.
Anyways, WiB swiped it from: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/can-we-afford-the-military-budget/
Posted by: Will Baird | June 14, 2011 at 11:30 AM
I wouldn't rely on Lewis Page. He's a climate-change denier, which makes you wonder about his judgment more generally. He also has some very odd ideas about naval strategy and tactics which are rather close to the policy he denounces so violently - he wrote a whole book claiming that we only needed aircraft carriers and submarines, none of these funny little grey ships. The government has basically followed that policy, which is partly why it's such a mess.
WRT NATO, part of the problem is that there is specialisation within NATO but it doesn't map onto the political situation. Germany was meant to provide most of the helicopter lift for the NATO central front and for the Allied Manoeuvre Force, and Italy to do the same in the Med. Hence the Germans have a huge fleet of CH-53s and the Italians have a lot of CH-47. But they're not so keen on Afghanistan so they're not there.
Posted by: Alex | June 21, 2011 at 04:01 PM